Water Information w/CCR

Public Water Supply

The City of Abilene manages two underground water sources (Sand Springs Aquifer and the River Alluvium) that are used to provide potable water to approximately 3,200 water customers including Dickinson County Rural Water District No. 2. On any given day, the Water Treatment Plant produces between 1.0 and 3.0 million gallons per day (MGD) to meet the community's demands for water.

Although the Water Treatment Plant can produce up to 4.5 MGD, it is constrained by the amount of water that can physically be pumped from the ground for treatment. Equally important is the number of water rights the City manages. While the City has water rights for about 700 million gallons of water, it is only able to use 300 million gallons of its water rights because of complexities in state water law.

During the hot and dry summer months, the City has been treating 3.0 MGD to meet demand. This has required the wells to be heavily utilized in order to produce enough supply to meet demand. Additionally, well depths are at their lowest recorded levels since 1974. For these reasons, City officials have declared a Water Warning and have asked water customers to employ voluntary water conservation.

Well Exploration and Development

The most recent hydro-geology study can be found here.

STUDY LINK (PDF)